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Rediscovering Manilius' Astronomica Edited by Steven J. Green And Forgotten Stars: Rediscovering Manilius’ Astronomica edited by Steven J. Green and Katharina Volk Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. .ISBN 978–0– 19–958646–2. Cloth $150.00 xx + 342 Reviewed by Mark Riley Sacramento, CA [email protected] Despite his participation in the Golden Age of Latin literature under Au- gustus, and despite many passages of surpassing artistry, Manilius and his Astronomica, a 4200-line poem describing the heavens and the astrological methods of forecasting, have until recently received little attention in the English-speaking world. Modern scholarly work has generally appeared in German, French, or Italian, and has been crowned by an excellent two- volume Italian edition with translation and extensive commentary on the liter- ary and astrological matters relevant to the text [Feraboli, Flores, and Scarcia 1996–2001]. Unfortunately this edition is somewhat difficult of access in the United States.The Anglosphere’s access to Manilius is through G. P. Goold’s indispensable Loeb edition [1977], which provides a thoroughly edited text, a fine translation, and a 120-page introduction with a detailed explanation of Manilius’ astrology. Now Katharina Volk, the author of two previous books on Manilius, and Steven Green, who has written on Manilius’ contemporary Ovid, have edited an outstanding collection of essays on the Astronomica, presenting in English the results of recent German (Hübner, Heilen), French (Abry), and Italian (Flores) work, along with essays by English and American scholars.The editors hope—reasonably—that this collection will restore Manilius to his proper place in scholarship, if not in popular appeal. The book is edited with an eye to the reader’s convenience: Manilius’ Latin text is quoted extensively but always with an English translation, usually Goold’s; footnotes are at the bottom of the page; background information and important comments are in the text where they belong, not relegated to the footnotes. The book’s binding and printing are first rate; any typographical errors escaped my notice. © 2013 Institute for Research in Classical Philosophy and Science issn 1549–4497 (online) All rights reserved issn 1549–4470 (print) Aestimatio 10 (2013) 166–174 Mark Riley 167 Katharina Volk’s ‘Introduction: A Century of Manilian Scholarship’ introduces the poet and his poem, focusing on the textual and manuscript history, including the several Renaissance editions and commentaries that appeared after the poem’s discovery in 1417. The definitive modern edition, she notes, appeared in A. E. Housman’s five volumes [1903–1930]. It should be added that Housman’s openly expressed contempt for his author (as well as for all previous students of Manilius) probably did much to discourage English scholarship on Manilius.Volk also discusses the poem’s date, political context, and intellectual background, particularly its Stoicism. She raises the interesting question concerning Manilius’ decision to write an astrological poem in a political atmosphere hostile to the art, especially after Augustus’ decree of ad 11 against astrologers.Volk likewise discusses the poem’s didactic genre and its poetics—her book of 2002 is on this topic—and finally the reception of the poem in the Renaissance. Each of the topics mentioned by Volk is also addressed in the other essays collected here. The essays are divided into five categories arising from the nature of the contributions, not from any requirement derived from Manilius’ work itself. This review will describe each essay under its category. 1. Intellectual and Scientific Backdrop The essays in this section describe Manilius’ philosophical background, with particular emphasis on his Stoicism. Citing passages from Cicero and Seneca, Elaine Fantham’s ‘More Sentiment Than Science’ outlines the conventional Roman attitudes to the stars and celestial phenomena: non-scientific, scep- tical about the stars’ predictive value, and suspicious of astrology in general. These attitudes derive from upper-class scepticism about scientific topics and from political caution, especially after Augustus’ decree of ad 11 against astrologers. Thomas Habinek’s ‘Manilius’ Conflicted Stoicism’ discusses the contradic- tions in the poem’s philosophy. Stoic physics emphasized the corporeality of everything; it rejected Platonic ‘ideas’, Aristotle’s contrast of matter and form, and any type of non-physical manifestation.The universe is a single body with rational causation.The four elements interact with each other through the pneuma, or life-breath; this pneuma explains how celestial bodies influ- ence things on Earth. Manilius’ difficulty lies in the traditional astrological doctrine that stars interact through the geometrical figures of trine, square, 168 Aestimatio opposition, and conjunction, all being incorporeal geometric figures, not bodies. Habinek also devotes several paragraphs to a criticism of Goold’s translation for being too metaphorical. For example,‘quibus aspirantibus’ [5.142] is translated by Goold as ‘beneath their influence’. Habinek suggests that this should be ‘when they, i.e., stars, breath [on them, i.e., those born when the stars are visible]’, treating ‘aspirare’ as ‘to transmit the pneuma’. In short, Goold has watered down Manilius’ Stoic physics. Daryn Lehoux’s ‘Myth and Explanation in Manilius’ begins with the conven- tional contrast of myth versus science; the history of science is the history of not-myth. So what is myth?Lehoux uses Manilius as a test case. For Manilius, myth can be a series of poetic tropes, traditional in epic.These are not to be taken seriously because ‘Earth creates the cosmos from which it hangs’ [2.38]: the mythical figures have no independent existence but are simply representations of the qualities of early creatures. Myth can also be allegory which captures some truth about the universe, for example, the interrelationships among the nature of earthly creatures (bears), its celestial representation (Ursa Major), and those born under the influence of these celestial bodies. Myth enables us to express the meaningful arrangement of this rational universe. 2. Integrity and Consistency The central essay in this section is Katharina Volk’s ‘Manilian Self-Contradic- tion.’ Volk cites the following example of a contradiction: in book 3, Manilius describes two ways of calculating the rising times of each zodiacal sign.The first is a fairly sophisticated stepwise method of deriving the rising times for each sign as the day-length changes at the different latitudes from the equator to the North Pole [3.247–482]. So far so good. But immediately there- after, Manilius presents another totally inaccurate method: assign two hours rising time for each sign throughout the year at every latitude [3.483–509]. Manilius gives both methods equal validity. How does the reader deal with such contradictions? Previous explanations have included ignorance on the part of Manilius, hasty composition, or verses interpolated by a later, incompetent writer. Volk suggests that Manilius’ presentation of traditional topics in traditional language gives rise to many of these contradictions. In addition, Manilius desires to orchestrate an effect in each chapter rather than to create a coherent whole and, hence, is less worried about contradictions. Mark Riley 169 The other essays in this section respond to Volk. John Henderson’s ‘Watch This Space (Getting Around 1.215–46)’, a densely argued postmodernist tour de force, argues that in fact many so-called contradictions are no such thing. Earlier commentators had accused Manilius of: (1) confusing the northern and southern hemispheres of the globe with the eastern and western; (2) thinking that the Moon is eclipsed differently in different parts of the Earth; and (3) believing that stars visible in the southern hemisphere (like Canopus) cannot be seen in the northern hemisphere. By explicating lines 215–246 in detail, Henderson explains away the contra- dictions. He also describes Manilius’ vocabulary relating to space and time, and he shows how Manilius plays with and off the knowledge, language, and poetic devices of astronomical epic. Occasionally Manilius’ metaphorical language violates logic because he, like Icarus, reads the universe from above, with a vantage point beyond the terrestrial. Wolfgang-Rainer Mann’s ‘On Two Stoic “Paradoxes” in Manilius’ discusses two contradictions (paradoxes) that derive from Manilius’ Stoicism.The first is ‘Every human being has the capacity to understand because of inborn reason’ versus ‘Only an elite can grasp the real nature of the universe through astrology.’ The second is that ‘The universe is reasonable and wants to be understood’ versus ‘The universe is hidden and needs Manilius to reveal the truth.’ Mann shows how these paradoxes are solved in other Stoic authors: reason is indeed an intrinsic potential capability in any rational being but is in fact a hard-won achievement. In ‘Arduum ad astra:The Poetics and Politics of Horoscopic Failure in Manil- ius’ Astronomica’, Steven Green, one of the editors of this collection, ap- proaches Manilius as if he, Green, were a student of limited knowledge attempting to learn astrology from the author. He fails but then explains why. Manilius has intentionally written a defective or incomplete account of the science to avoid political problems. Astrology was not in good odor under Augustus, the dedicatee of the Astronomica. Hence, Manilius praises the science to the emperor as science but he does not actually present the material necessary to allow a civilian to learn the science. A corollary to this incompleteness is that the contradictions may well be intentional, a method 170 Aestimatio to mislead the unwary. This essay is well argued but the hypothesis seems to this reviewer to be unlikely. In fact, the four essays in this section, ‘Integrity and Consistency’, ignore the circumstances under which a literary work (I intentionally avoid the term ‘book’) was published in antiquity. Frequent references in ancient literature show that authors read sections of their works to patrons,1 to peers,2 or to occasionally unwilling guests.3 Manilius doubtless read free-standing sections of his poem to his audiences over a period of several years.
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